perfidy

Has anyone else noticed that only American Mars landers actually survive to transmit pictures back to Earth? The Russians landed the first probe on Mars back in '71, but it stopped transmitting 20 seconds after it landed. That one must have caught the Martians by surprise. They were more on the ball with other non-American probes.

Of course, even we can go too far - when we planned a landing near their south polar home, that lander had to go. Nevertheless, the success of our other probes is a clear indication that the Martians approve of our American way of life.

... is a robotic dog that carries your ammo. At least according to this Wired Magazine report. 

If your conventional, kibble powered fido is no longer adequate to your needs, rest easy; the new model is gas powered, and can carry 50 lbs of gear for a grateful foot slogger. Naturally, much work remains ahead before our soldiers enter battle accompanied by their faithful robotic rovers, spots and fidos. These initial contracts are essentially fishing expeditions for companies hoping for truly large amounts of government butter. Developing walking, let alone running robots has proved fearsomely difficult, so far - but no one doubts that with enough effort, and enough cash, it can eventually be done.

Mindful of the difficulties of creating walking, running and gamboling robots, the Navy is focusing on the development of mine detecting mechanical lobsters, and disembodied elephant trunk repair robots. The Air Force will eventually live up to its nickname, the chair force, when it succeeds in perfecting combat-capable UAVs, probably within a few decades. We already know how to build jet fighters that can perform maneuvers that would kill their pilots, it's simply a matter of developing the software to make them autonomous.

We shouldn't be surprised by these developments. After all, we have been using robots in combat for decades - what is a cruise missile but a simple, autonomous, jet powered bomb delivery robot, and the new reconaissance drones are already at least partially autonomous. So far, though, most military robots have been large scale, and under the control of rear echelon personnel. The eventual advent of robo-lassie ["Robo-lassie! Lance Corporal timmie is hurt! Go find help!] is just another example of the trend in the US military for putting ever more capabilities in the hands of the common soldier.

These are great days.

This is a happy article, and just in time for my favorite holiday of the year. We are remarkably blessed in this nation, as anyone with the merest inkling of historical awareness can see. Compared to our entire recorded history, and to most of the rest of the world today, we have it better than any people has any right to expect. The only standard that exceeds our current accomplishment and success is that of our own ideals and hope for perfection. At least it keeps us busy.

On a more personal note, I would like to apologize for my recent absence, and offer thanks for the marvelous interweb which makes this blog possible. For new friends like Geeklethal, and old friends like Ross and Johno, and of course for our legions of loyal readers. God bless, all five of you. You rock.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving, and beware the the effects of tryptophan while operating heavy machinery.

You always wanted to know, and now here's your answer.

This is interesting.

I bet the editor had fun with that headline. I will manfully and humanely refrain from comments about Frenchmen and guns.

In a disturbing development for Johno, CDs may soon be relegated to the ash heap of history. Ananova is reporting that those pesky scientists have discovered a way to make permanent data storage devices from plastic antistatic film. The new technology layers the polymer PEDOT with thin film silicon circuitry to create a new storage medium that could store in excess of a gigabyte of data in less than a cubic centimeter. This is passing dense, information wise. In addition, the new storage technology has the advantage of having no moving parts, requiring no batteries, and being fairly durable compared to traditional CDs.

So, in less than five years if the researchers are correct in their estimates, Johno will have to figure out what to do with thirty linear feet of beer coasters.

Space Daily is reporting that the Chinese have announced more details for its Lunar plans. Within the next three years, the Chinese will launch a Lunar orbiting probe, which is intended to produce three dimensional maps of the lunar surface, information on the composition of the Moon's surface, maps of lunar soil depth, and measurements of the environment between the Earth and the moon.

Beyond the lunar orbiter phase of the plan, the Chinese also hope to develop a automated lunar lander, possibly equipped with a pathfinder-style robotic rover, and eventually a sample return mission. All of this presumably leads to the possibility of a manned Chinese lunar mission, which has been a stated goal of the Chinese space program for some time.

Which means that Burt Rutan needs to get moving so that by the time the creaky apparatus of the Chinese Communist government lands on the moon, they'll find Americans already there, selling timeshare condos and opening amusement parks.

[wik] Do you realize how cool a lunar amusement park would be? Just think of the roller coasters you could build in 1/6th gravity. Also, in weak grasp of the Moon's pull, you could literally strap on wings and fly.

[alsø wik] I really hope that whatever successes the Chinese have in their space program, it does not result in some panicky space race reaction on the part of the American government. The best way to kick ChiCom ass is simply to let the unlimited creativity of the American economy to the job.

By way of Norbizness, we find this most excellent site, the Church Sign Generator. I had some fun with this, and here is one example:

The page also thoughtfully includes links to other generator pages. My father would like the ACME Licence Plate generator:

There is also a link to a list of generator pages, all guaranteed to lower your productivity.

Lileks has today published the nearest thing to a screed he's had in a while. He assaults Ain't It Cool News, head red, Harry Knowles and his recent analysis of the third Matrix movie. I have not yet seen the aforementioned moving picture, but Lileks' pen strikes several telling blows:

Alas, he cannot write. He is a horrid stylist; he writes like someone mashing the keyboard with bratwursts; his politics have the sophistication of a preschool crayon drawing, and his self-confidence in his insights is matched only by his inability to see how fatuous his work often sounds.

The social pleasantries now disposed of, Lileks moves in a little closer: 

and the Machines - they're drilling to put a stop to it all. Now, the problem is - the only person that can put a stop to The War" on Terrorism are the terrorist.

He are, are he?

NOW - What is Agent Smith? Essentially, Agent Smith was Communism. If we are all the same, then there is no reason for violence. Resistance is Futile. Communism was fantastic as it represents an ideology that the Capitalist and the Extremists both hated. And it was spreading and taking over and trying to assimilate cultures and suppress belief systems. Or you could say AGENT SMITH is that Born Again Christian type that is trying to eradicate another's belief system - and ultimately - the elimination of both either politically, humanly or functionally is a move towards peace.

You can't make this up. You can only stand in awe. If I can untangle the wet knotted shoelaces of Knowles' prose, he seems to be saying that we can only live in peace when everyone agrees to believe in nothing but peace.

Ultimately what they believe or we believe is inconsequential.

Spoken like a man with no beliefs. Or, more accurately, spoken like someone who thinks that line above demonstrates some sort of intellectual sophistication lost on people who do the whole work-kids-church thing. Trust me, Harry - what someone believes is of great consequence. And if your society believes nothing it ends up making its last stand in the Temple of No Particular Belief System with the squiddies hammering on the door, possessed of a terrible certainty: they believe you should die.

Read the whole thing, as they say. His summation of the Matrix trilogy is especially interesting:

I took away something else from the Matrix trilogy: it is a product of deeply confused people. They want it all. They want individualism and community; they want secularism and transcendence; they want the purity of committed love and the licentious fun of an S&M club; they want peace and the thrill of violence; they want God, but they want to design him on their own screens with their own programs by their own terms for their own needs, and having defined the divine on their own terms, they bristle when anyone suggests they have simply built a room with a mirror and flattering lighting. All three Matrix movies, seen in total, ache for a God. But they can't quite go all the way. They're like three movies about circular flat meat patties that can never quite bring themselves to say the word "hamburger."

Philosophically, the Matrix movies are banal, but they're no worse than the empty animism of George Lucas' Force-centric cosmology. As dramas, they lag - but Wagner wasn't thrill-a-minute, either. The moments of emotional connection are few, but they're there, almost like Burma-Shave signs spaced out every hundred miles.

I have enjoyed the first two Matrices, althought the first was certainly the superior film. One thing that I enjoyed was the cafeteria style eclecticism with which they injected the philosophical bits - it allowed you to construct a better dialogue in your head. You could fill in the blanks in a way pleasing to your aesthetic, without worrying over being contradicted by a awful, banal, overly determinate summation at the end of the movie. Ambiguity is the artist's best friend - it is the cinematic equivalent of the old chestnut about silence being mistaken for wisdom.

I'm surprised that this story hasn't gotten as much traffic as the "sixteen words" or plamegate. Or maybe I'm not.

Let the von Danikenite loonies get their heads around this:

Drudge is reporting that some of the undocumented immigrants that were arrested in the WallMart bust are now planning to sue, yes, sue WallMart for - get this - discrimination as well as failing to pay overtime, withhold taxes and make required workers' compensation contributions.

What these people fail to realize is that they are, you know, illegal aliens. The very first thing that they did when they arrived in our country was to break our laws. They have absolutely no right to sue. They should be immediately deported. (Not that WallMart should get off - employing illegal immigrants violates the law as well.)

Many people who complain about our policies toward illegal immigrants are accused of racism or the usual parade of PC claptrap. But there is a world of difference between wanting to stop illegal immigration and wanting to stop legal immigration. We can argue about how many people from what countries we should let in and for what reasons until the cows come home blue in the face - fine - but there should be no argument that illegal immigration is, well, illegal and should be stopped.

[wik] Our own Minister Ross is a legal immigrant, and despite his lefty canuck ideas, is a perfect example of the sort of person we should allow in. A effective crack down on illegal immigration would not effect him.

[alsø wik] We do not want to go down the road that Europe and especially Germany have gone, with a permanent population of unassimilated gastarbeiter who are second class citizens. The only way to prevent that is to reduce the immigration from Mexico, so that those who are here can assimilate, and will not be permanently isolated in Spanish speaking enclaves and having minimal interaction with the rest of soceity. We also need to level to Canadian ghettoes in our richer suburbs.

This story from the UK is interesting - some physicists from the University of Wales at Aberystwyth have figured out how much damage Guy Fawkes' barrels of gunpowder would have caused had his dastardly plot not been foiled. Apparently, he would have "devastated much of London as well as blowing the palace of Westminster sky-high."

"Using explosion physics the team deduced that streets up to one-third of a mile from the centre of the palace of Westminster would have suffered severe structural damage and windows would have shattered within a radius of two-thirds of a mile from the centre of the blast."

Dr Geraint Thomas, head of the Centre for Explosion Studies, (now there's a cool job title) said that the 2,500kg of gunpowder Guy Fawkes was found with, would be equivalent to the same amount of TNT due to the fact that explosives expert Fawkes had carefully packed the gunpowder tightly in barrels.

Here's a summary of the plot for those in need of one.

The AP is reporting that sales of cloned cattle are increasing in anticipation of an FDA ruling that cloned beef is safe to eat. Personally, I don't see how the FDA could rule otherwise, given that a clone is by definition an exact copy of another animal. If the original ambulatory steak was edible, so will its identical twin. Of course, we must get ready for the deluge of dirty hippies screaming, "Frankenfood."

Meanwhile, I eagerly await my first cloned steak. It has such 50s retro science of the future feel to it. I arrive home from work in my jet car, park in the garage of my circular, all-glass home of the future, tell the robot butler to hold all calls on the videophone, and sit down to a meal of cloned beef and genetically engineered potatoes. What could be better?

As always, the Onion has it straight.

This is cool beyond words. If you're a geek, and I know you are or you wouldn't be here. This website allows you to create things like this: 

Terrorists do care about US strategy and actions. Because right now, we are hunting them down. They are on the run, hiding in caves, and fearful that they will be ratted out. They are fearful that a group of US Special Forces like the ones described in GeekLethal’s first post will be knocking on the door of their hideout. The only places where terrorist attacks have happened in the wake of 9/11 are those places where we do not have troops – like Saudi Arabia, where we (hopefully temporarily) left, or Indonesia, or Israel. The most powerful military force in world history is devoted to exterminating terrorists. I think that this fact has made an impact on their thinking, and on their plans.

It will also have an effect on those who might have joined them in more salubrious times. When the uniform result of an attack on America is death and destruction not for America but for the terrorists, all but the most zealous will think twice. And even the most zealous might reconsider their means when 99% of all attempts result in abject failure. The martyr must not merely die for his faith, but he must inflict damage in the process. Continued failure will result in demoralization.

During the recent Gulf War, even Iraqi military strategy assumed the basic goodness and restraint of American forces. They hid behind civilians, knowing that we would not willingly harm civilians. The Iraqi people have witnessed that, and our efforts to rebuild their nation – not merely the damage from our brief bombing campaign, but from decades of neglect. If we are successful in remaking Iraq into a democratic nation – which will require the willing cooperation of the Iraqis, the Islamic world will notice. And the fact of a successful, free, prosperous Arab nation will put immense pressure on other authoritarian and despotic governments.

The proper question to ask is, “does America give a shit what the rest of the world thinks?” We were attacked; and we are, with the assistance of many other nations taking action we see fit to remove the threat. This is a basic right of national sovereignty. While we have taken steps to get the approval of others, we do not require it, any more than France needed UN approval to invade the Ivory Coast.

The cost of our invasion will likely exceed $300 billion dollars. That is less than one year’s expenditure on our military. It is less than three percent of our gross national product for one year. The occupation and eventual departure from Iraq will not bankrupt us, and I cannot conceive of any possible domino effect that would lead from that occupation to any kind of decline. "We didn’t spend the money on drugs for rich old people, Revolution in the streets!" This is, well, extremely unlikely at best.
The dynamism of our economy is intact – despite the recent cyclical recession, we grew at an over than 7% annual rate last quarter. The more mature and nuanced Europeans are still fighting high structural unemployment, low growth rates and stagnant technology. How this will lead to the things Ross fears eludes me.

I am reminded of an essay that PJ O’Rourke wrote, titled “Among the Euro-Weenies.”

Why yes, we do all have guns.

We're the badest-assed sons of bitches that ever jogged in Reeboks. We're three quarters grizzly bear and two-thirds car wreck and descended from a stock market crash on our mother's side. You take your Germany, France and Spain, roll them all together and it wouldn't give us room to park our cars. We're the big boys, Jack, the original, giant, economy-sized new and improved butt kickers of all time. When we snort coke in Houston, people lose their hats in Cap d'Antibes. And we've got an American Express card credit limit higher than your piss-ant metric numbers go.

You say our country's never been invaded? You're right, little buddy. Because I'd like to see the needle-dick foreigners who'd have the guts to try. We drink napalm to get our hearts started in the morning. A rape and a mugging is our way of saying "Cheerio". Hell can't hold our sock hops.

We walk taller, talk louder, spit further, f*ck longer and buy more things than you know the names of. I'd rather be a junkie in a New York City jail than king, queen and jack of all Europeans. We eat little countries like this for breakfast and shit them out before lunch.

The can of whup ass mentality does work in a world where civilization is not universal. Between the US and Canada, or in Europe and Japan, we can discuss things reasonably. There civilization is the order, literally, of the day. Elsewhere, where as you correctly note, there is no end of despots, it is a Hobbesian war of all against all. Europeans make the mistake of assuming that their polite discourse can be extended to this world, or that persuasion and kind words will change the hearts of totalitarian mini-fuehrers.

For those who are not part of civilization there is threat, coercion, and violence. In order to secure the safety of our nation, and not coincidently the safety of the the rest of the civilized world that depends on the American military for safety, we have to be prepared to open that can of whup ass. Sometimes there is no other way. Ten years of sanctions, resolutions and jabber did not end the horrific regime of Saddam Hussein. Bloody compulsion did. It is sadly common for those who are protected to resent those who do the bloody work of protecting.

Terrorists are created not by our actions, but by the failure of their societies. We did not piss them off so much that they decided to kill themselves. They fixate on our success, and figure that we must be preventing them from the riches, power and glory that by right is theirs. When we destroy those who attacked us, we are deterring others. We are demonstrating that is foolhardy in the extreme to bait us. We also demonstrate that we are magnanimous in the aftermath, and that we do not hold grudges, and that we are happy when others join us in prosperity, peace and freedom just as after WWII.

That you describe my foreign policy judgments as WWF smackdowns or NASCAR rallies is condescending not just to me but to the people who watch NASCAR and WWF. They, by and large, understand that if you’re attacked and do nothing, you will be attacked again. And nothing includes talking. Response must not be subtle. Despots are not noted for their grasp of subtlety and nuance. This level of wisdom seems entirely unattainable to much of the left. We used our force and accomplished something good – the removal of Saddam Hussein. Now we are using our unparalled wealth to rebuild that nation. The rest of the world will respect us no more or no less than it always had as a result of this war. Those who are envious or fearful will remain as they are. Those who appreciate that for all our flaws, we do stand for liberty, well they have always been our friends.

AP is reporting that in the third quarter, economic growth has jumped up to a 7.2% annual rate, more than double the not particularly anemic 3.3% growth rate of the previous quarter. This is the strongest single quarter gain since 1984.

The economy's recovery from the 2001 recession has resembled the side of a jagged cliff; a quarter of strength often has been followed by a quarter of weakness. But analysts are saying that pattern could be broken, considering increasing signs the economy finally has shaken its lethargy and is perking up.

Near rock-bottom short-term interest rates, along with President Bush's third round of tax cuts, have helped the economy shift into a higher gear during the summer, economists say. The next challenge is making sure the rebound is self-sustaining.

Job creation surged to a net increase of 57,000 in September, the first increase in eight months - though job creation is generally a lagging indicator of recovery. The article goes on to list improvements in other economic indicators - drops in unemployment claims, increases in wages and benefits, consumer spending, and business capital spending.

As for the government's role:

Federal government spending, which grew at a 1.4 percent rate, was only a minor contributor to GDP in the third quarter. Spending on national defense was flat. But in the second quarter, military spending on the Iraq war - which grew at a whopping 45.8 percent rate - helped to catapult economic growth.

The evidence suggests that businesses are still somewhat gunshy, and unwilling to trust in the economy's rebound just yet. But if, as economists predict, that the next quarter will show at least 4% growth, I think that we've turned the corner on the most recent cyclical recession.

Of course, one result of a growing economy will be the reduction in deficits as government tax revenue increases. If the typical pattern holds, we will enter a period of economic growth that will last another decade before the next recession. If this growth period is even half as potent as the last one, we should see deficits disappearing again so long as the increases in federal spending stays not to far ahead of inflation.

Of course, it would be better to see a reduction in federal spending. I have played with the budget simulator that Ross linked recently, too - and balancing the budget is simple. As long as you have your priorities straight. I balanced the budget by increasing defense spending and simply halting increases in social spending, while eliminating the department of education and farm subsidies.

And, in answer to one of Ross' claims in the previous post, what are you smoking? Defense spending, including the Iraq War and Veteran's Benefits, is $547.61 billion. Spending for social welfare (Education, Health, Medicare, Social Welfare, and Social Security) is $1.27 trillion. That's almost one and a half times more for welfare boondoggles, not an order of magnitude less.
Huge jails house people who commit crimes. Blacks are in prison because they commit more crimes - generally against other blacks. This is a sad situation, but you can make the argument that social policies dating back to the sixties are partly responsible. When you reduce everyone's taxes by, say 5%, of course the people who pay more taxes will get more money back in absolute terms. But that isn't what happened. After the tax cuts, the wealthiest among us are paying a larger fraction of the total tax collected than before. And it is semantically incorrect to refer to the government as spending money on a tax cut. People earned that money, the government takes it. If the government takes less, it is not spending money.

I agree with Ross that Agriculture subsidies are a travesty, and should go. Likewise with other subsidies. As far as the tax cut, Ross can feel free to give more money to the government, but I'd like to keep mine.

My general view on government spending is that as long as we have entitlement programs that consume vast portions of the federal budget, worrying about nickel-ante programs that cost only millions of dollars is pointless. I really have a hard time getting exercised over the (on the government scale) small expenditures on things like the NEA, NPR, and so on. If the liberals need NPR to get the word out, fine. They can have their All Things Considered and Lake Wobegon Days.

The most important things to spend money on, to me, are those things required by the constitution. Defense, Treasury, Justice and the Courts, the State Department. Once those are adequately funded, we can use leftover funds to do nice things like unemployment insurance, welfare, medicaid, scientific research and the like. (Though they should be reformed, and their budgets should never, ever be indexed to the inflation rate. Each budget should be approved by the Congress, not have built in automatic increases.) With the change the government finds under the couch, it can fund the smaller programs.

A friend of mine once had the idea that we should include a form on the Tax return that lists, to a reasonable amount of detail, the various departments and budget items in the gov't. You can then allocate your tax dollars to them however you like. Items that get no money from the taxpayers are eliminated. The gov't would be allowed discretionary control over tax revenue from businesses and excises, etc. It would be interesting to see what happens.

I've talked about this before, but progressive taxation is an offense to fairness. We are supposed to receive equal protection of the laws, it's in the constitution. Tax brackets are discrimination. There is no reason why if I earn $5000 more in a year, I am affected by a different set of standards than I am now. Everyone should have the same, exactly the same rules to live by.

This exercise in fantasy from the state controlled Egyptian press goes a long way toward explaining a lot of the problems that they have. Hat tip:
Daimnation! via Dodgeblogium.